when life hands you lemons…

Tags

bipolar disorder, blog for mental health 2015, borderline personality disorder, DBT, depression, mental health, mental illness, rebuilding my life, suicide

…freeze those fuckers and throw them at people you don’t like. Because seriously, who likes lemonade? But I digress, today is Thursday and on Thursdays we talk about mental health.

***TRIGGER WARNING***

I’m going to discuss suicide in this post. If that will bother you, stop reading now.

Something really cool happened yesterday. It’s probably only cool to me, but hey, my blog. This story actually starts back in 2010. Let’s hop in Mama’s time machine…

In February of 2010 I had a terrible breakup with a guy. That was pretty typical for me. I still hadn’t completed DBT and I wasn’t really taking care of myself. True to form I fell hard and scared him off. When he broke up with me I emptied the contents of the medicine cabinet into my stomach. That was my 4th serious attempt within two years. By the time I was found I was completely unconscious. The paramedics rushed me to the hospital, they pumped my stomach, and I spent time in the ICU.

Life was not good at that point, to say the very least.

I worked hard to get my life back together. I continued going to my therapy sessions, 3 times a week at the start, my mom locked my meds up and I only got one week worth at a time, and I learned how to think all over again. My psychiatrist wasn’t sure if I’d finally managed to cause myself permanent brain damage. (I hadn’t.)

Slowly but surely things came back together. I finished my Master’s degree and started doing better at work. My relationships improved. I learned how to not give up on myself anymore.

Back to the present…

A month or so ago my boss told me that our prescription insurance will do mail order three month med refills on generics for NOTHING. I take three prescriptions, all psych meds, and all generic. But I was concerned that my doc wouldn’t go for it because of my history.

The box came yesterday.

 

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random thought for the evening

Tags

bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, mental health, mental illness, moods, sick, sleep, suicide

I have mostly been chilling the fuck out today, which has been odd, but mostly more like “oddly awesome.” I ate some Ramen noodles on the sofa and watched more tv than I have in probably a month. Oh, and I made more headers so that they can rotate, but only because that damn Evil Squirrel told me to.

But anyway, this afternoon I watched the movie Girl, Interrupted for the first time in years. More precisely, I watched it for the first time since being diagnosed. There’s a subtle but very significant difference right there. See, I have Borderline Personality Disorder which is the diagnosis given to Susanna, the lead character. I also have Bipolar Disorder which is what Lisa is hinted to have. And now, knowing what I know about myself, that is an entirely different movie than the one I watched when it first came out.

It’s a very interesting movie, though I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it to someone who has a mental health Dx as it could quite easily be triggering. If you haven’t seen it and you’re uncertain if you should, err on the side of caution and skip it. But if you know someone who doesn’t have a Dx and needs a bit of a reality check as to what it’s like being mental, that’s the flick for them to watch. In my opinion it’s the best contemporary depiction of mental health in the US, at least if you consider a story set in the Vietnam War era contemporary.

At any rate, I saw a lot of myself in Susanna and bits of myself in Lisa. What troubled me most was that at the end of the movie Susanna was deemed “healthy” and “cured” by the psychiatrist and therapist at the hospital she’d been living at. I had to keep reminding myself that most of the research into treatment for Borderline happened after the movie was set and times have changed dramatically since then.

For now, we can learn better ways to cope but we cannot be cured. And for me, for now, that’s alright.

mental health thursday

Tags

bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, depression, family, friends, life, limits, love, mental health, mental illness, moods, suicide

I’m going to put a Trigger Warning for Suicide on this one kids.

I’m going to talk some about suicide again and I don’t want to catch anyone off guard. Y’all know me by now – no gore or icky details, but I’d like to speak honestly. I’ve written about this before, and I’ll write about it again, and again, and again until no one ever feels compelled to take their own life.

If you’re fortunate enough to have never felt like taking your life was the only way out, count your blessings. No really, we’ll wait.

You go say a little prayer of thanks to the higher power of your understanding that you’ve never had to experience the kind of soul searing anguish in your heart that make you honestly believe that never ever breathing again was the best way to remedy the situation.

And then you need to say thank you again, just for good measure.

Feeling actively suicidal was the most unholy feeling I’ve ever experienced. Just think about it – hurting on the inside so fucking bad that you couldn’t see a way to make it stop hurting except to submit to the ultimate hurt.

It’s all about the pain and wanting to end it, but not have the foggiest fucking idea of how to do that. Because some of us awesome people don’t have awesome coping skills. We want to live, we want to be happy again, we want to know the love that people feel for us, but for fuck sake, we need that pain to go away. And we need some help.

That point of giving up, giving in to the pain and the suffering and just wanting to never ever care again – that, my friends, is the dangerous place. That is often the point of no return. That is the point where passively thinking to yourself that you want it to end in vague terms that don’t exactly mean anything changes to making plans, plans like you’d make to meet a friend for drinks. Only these plans aren’t supposed to be the kind you end up making again. And again.

And there are those misguided people who will tell you how cowardly suicide is. Yes, in a way, but no, not really. It depends on why, WHY does your heart hurt like this?

I cannot even fathom being bullied into suicide. That wasn’t me, never me. I took care of the bullying myself. I was never good enough for ME. Those voices telling me that garbage, trying to poison my soul, those all sounded like my voice. And in that respect, yes, I was being cowardly. I wasn’t willing to fight for the life my mother and father struggled for so many long years to give me. How selfish was that?

But this is the rub. I would not hurt anymore, but Mom and Josh and my nieces and my friends – the people who love me and value me would hurt so much worse. THAT would be selfish, selfish beyond all measure of the word. The kind of selfish that you carry with you into the afterlife and then with you when you’re born again, as some kind of bottom dwelling, garbage eating fish. Or worse – a politician.

Correction – I WAS that girl. I would still spend as much time and energy as it required to get someone the necessary help or talk them down, but I’m ok now, my voice says nicer things to me in my head these days. I’ve been okay for more than four years. Four glorious years. But it took hard work, lots and LOTS of it. And it took love, oh so much LOVE.

the most amazing mommy in the whole world

true love visits you in the psych ward on christmas eve

There are lessons today, kids – pay attention, this shit is important

There will be another day – take a chance that it’s going to be better

It will probably be hard again, no, it will almost certainly be hard again – but you can do this, you’ve done it before

This might be the truest statement ever written

I’m going to offer this again – if you need help, visit the site or call 1-800-273-8255. You are worth having an amazing life, and if you aren’t here, how can your life be amazing? If you don’t think anyone loves you, you’re wrong.

I LOVE YOU.

part of the story of Mama

Tags

anxiety, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, DBT, life, mental health, mental illness, sex, stress, suicide, therapy

Y’all know by now that I’m living with a dual Dx – bipolar II and borderline. I’ve spent time inpatient more times than I can clearly remember. I’ve also done a few different kinds of therapy, an outpatient program at the hospital, and I’ve taken lots of different meds. Over the course of the last 9 years I’ve gotten pretty good at the whole “being mental” thing. But lately I’ve been wondering if I really have. Let me attempt to explain…

I am not the least bit ashamed to “out” myself about the bipolar. I don’t really care who knows or what they think. It’s part of who I am and it’s shaped me to be the person I am – a strong, intelligent woman who doesn’t take shit from anyone.

But I damn near never say anything about the borderline.

It’s a piece of me, for sure, but it’s a piece that embarrasses me. I think back on all of the asinine things I’ve done and wonder if that could have really been me. I’m so much smarter than that, aren’t I? Did I really buy a $30,000 sports car for a guy I had just met because I thought it would make him like me? How many guys did I sleep with immediately after meeting them because I just knew that was how they’d show me they loved me? How many times did someone go from an angel to a devil in my mind within a span of seconds all because I have no concept of “gray?”

Yes, I have done all of those things and a million more. Am I proud of any of it? Nope. Would I rather the world never had to witness the destruction that is me in a shitty mood? Yup. But am I still here, and still me, and still willing to fight for my sanity? You had better fucking believe it.

So yes, I’m embarrassed about the borderline, but I’m working on it. Going through two rounds of DBT has helped immensely. I’m not that same confused little girl that I was when I did those things. I have more effective skills in my arsenal of tools these days. But sometimes, sometimes she comes out again, and it scares me.

sorting shit out

Tags

alcohol, bipolar disorder, depression, friends, life, limits, love, meds, mental health, mental illness, moods, motivation, random shit that falls out of my brain, school, sleep, stress, suicide, the world is full of fucking idiots, work

You’ll be pleased to know that this is not what’s really been going on, more just how I’ve been feeling lately. (and that picture is funny as fuck and now you’re singing the song in your head, I know you are) Kind of like a cross between “chewing gum on the bottom of your shoe” and “food poisoning from McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets” (that’s a true story actually, about the nuggets – I didn’t eat them for a solid 20 years).

Anyway, I’m not quite feeling like an utter mess anymore, just still not like the polished turd I normally am. (do I dare do a Google Image search for “polished turd?” sure…)

Wow, who knew? And, interestingly enough, no pictures of tits this time! Though there was one of Steven Tyler, so make of that what you will.

Things at work still mostly suck and I’m not really sure if that will get better or worse any time soon, or if it’ll stay the same. Gawd love consistency, I just wish it wasn’t that things have been so consistently shitty lately. I do have to say that I lost ANY remaining tatter of respect for S today when she tossed off a joke about the suicide hotline.

Someone needs to make me this sign for my birthday

At any rate, I plan to get revenge when the time is right. My motto – “give ’em enough rope, let ’em hang themselves.” Works damn near every time.

And we’re getting busy, ridiculously busy. If I’m going to be providing y’all with the wit and wisdom that you’ve grown accustomed to, I’m going to have to schedule it ahead. There’s next to no time in my days anymore to do it on the fly, and that kind of sucks. I’m not sure when precisely I’ll be able to get back at it full-tilt, but hopefully soon. Josh goes to school on Tuesday and Thursday nights now so I have a bit of time between when he leaves and Mom gets home to tackle such things. Eventually I’d like to use that time to hit the treadmill, but not right now. My left leg is flaring up awful right now so there will be no extra ambulation in the near future.

Nope, no running for me

Things with Josh are improving. Having bipolar and being married is hard. Having bipolar and being married to someone who also has bipolar is quite likely the definition of insanity.

Mr. Rogers was one smart fella

We finally got to the point of being able to talk and get some things said which needed saying. Most importantly we remembered that we really do love each other and we choose to be together, not because we have to, but because we want to.

This really has nothing to do with anything, but I do wish the heat would kindly fuck off for a bit. The heat index (a “feels like” number consisting of some formula that involves the actual air temp and the humidity and is BIG SHIT in these parts) got close to 100F today I believe. I’m a fat little pale girl with curly hair who gets heat stroke incredibly easy. This kind of weather is damn near enough to put me in the ground. The only real upside this afternoon was that as I came around the corner onto our street I was greeted by the sight of several shirtless and very nicely toned and tanned young men taking down some trees in a neighbor’s yard.

Yes, kind of like this… Several of them…

There are some parts of summer in the Midwest that are good. Very Good.

you’re not alone

Tags

bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, depression, life, limits, love, meds, mental health, mental illness, stress, suicide, the world is full of fucking idiots

TRIGGER WARNING:  I’m going to talk very candidly about suicide in this post.

I think pretty much everyone who visits regularly knows that I have a Dx of Bipolar Disorder, type II. I talk about that a fair bit because it still plays a huge role in my daily life. But right now my meds are good and my moods are usually pretty stable. People who only know me professionally generally don’t know or suspect that there’s anything out of the ordinary about me. Life is pretty fucking good these days, but it wasn’t always.

I also have a Dx of Borderline Personality Disorder. If you’re not familiar with it, this article is pretty decent. I’ve been told that in order to get a Dx you have to satisfy at least 5 of the 9 criteria. I was satisfying 8 when I was diagnosed in 2008. Generally speaking there are no meds to treat Borderline, just a special kind of therapy – DBT. I’ve been through it twice now, 12 months total, and it really does help. But still, I struggled.

I attempted suicide 4 times between December 2008 and February 2010. All were overdoses. Anything I could find in the medicine cabinet went into my stomach, once along with an entire fifth of whiskey. Twice I was taken to the hospital in the back of an ambulance. Once I attempted at my grandmother’s grave and when my dad and sister came to get me I was so far gone I didn’t recognize either of them. Twice I woke up in the ICU. Once I had to drink activated charcoal. Once I had my stomach pumped.

The last time I was so combative, because of a nasty reaction to Ativan, that I was nearly arrested while still in the ICU. When I regained full consciousness I was handcuffed to the bed because I tried to punch a nurse. My psychiatrist was seriously concerned that I’d done permanent brain damage and that I’d never be whole again.

All of this heartache and bullshit because of boys.

I didn’t realize that not one of those lousy fuckers were really worth the oxygen they were sucking, let alone me giving up my life. But I couldn’t see that at the time. All I saw was that these boys who allegedly cared for me didn’t anymore and that meant that I must not be worth anything to anyone.

I. Was. Wrong.

Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. There are ways to handle anything, ANYTHING, that life throws at you. We have to remember that we are special, and valuable, and we mean the world to at least one person.

Fight. Fight with everything you’ve got and then fight some more. You’re not alone. We’ve been there, and we’ve felt the terrible nothing that seems so all consuming. But it’s not. There’s hope and there’s light and there’s tomorrow.

Let yourself have tomorrow.

If you’re at that place where you don’t see a way out, reach out. These wonderful people will help you. Visit the website or call them at 1-800-273-8255. Just don’t give up, don’t ever give up. You have so much left to offer, it would be a shame to deprive the world of your beauty so soon.

Mama loves you, stay safe.

not sure this will be readable

Tags

anxiety, bipolar disorder, divorce, friends, life, limits, love, meds, mental health, mental illness, moods, motivation, school, stress, suicide, the world is full of fucking idiots

I don’t really even know how to start this.  There are things I want to tell you, and I will.  Writing isn’t usually this hard for me.  Bear with me kids, we’ll get through it…

I went and saw shrinky-poo late yesterday afternoon.  I couldn’t bring myself to shower or put on clean clothes so I pulled my hair in a pony tail and slipped on sandals and went in the pink yoga pants and tie-dye shirt I’d slept in.  I told her everything.  EVERYTHING.  It was actually more of a mini-therapy session than anything else.  But it was good.  She said I looked good and I sounded good and, most importantly, that I was indeed strong enough to get through this.

Yes, I need to put my needs first.  If I can’t take care of myself I can’t take care of anyone else.

Yes, he needs help and he’s got to admit that he needs it and then want to get it in order for it to work.

Yes, I can do this without any additional meds.  She wants me to start seeing T-bone (my therapist) again for awhile to help reinforce the good decisions she sees me making already.

No, I do not NEED a man in my life anymore.  I’m 100% strong enough to be on my own.  I have loads of friends, my mom, and guys I can talk to when I want a different perspective.  And I have batteries.

So, Josh got home and I laid down the law.

1. Pills will be doled out one week at a time.  ALL PILLS, including mine and including the over the counter stuff.  The rest are securely stashed in a location he doesn’t know.  (and is fucking brilliant)  You can just as easily OD on acetaminophen as sleeping pills.
2. No money in his account anymore.  If he needs gas in the Honda, I’ll go with and he can use my card.  If he needs cigarettes, I’ll stop and get them.
3. I talked to the pharmacy yesterday when I picked up one of my regular refills – he isn’t allowed to pick up ANYTHING anymore.
4. He has an appointment next Wednesday afternoon with a psychiatric nurse (she can prescribe meds).  He’ll go.  He’ll be honest.  He’ll continue to go.  If she wants him to see a therapist he’ll do that as well.

I told him that right now I don’t trust him AT ALL.  Everything he says is a lie until proven otherwise.

So we talked and by the time we laid down to rest last night things were less tense.  I want to say they were “better” but that’s so hard to define right now.  We are talking more and we did manage to get a few concrete things out in the open, which I think has helped.

One of the things that really helped me yesterday was my support network.  My mom, my boss, shrinky-poo, my friends who texted and emailed me all day, all of you who left me such kind and supportive comments – all of you helped me be strong enough to do the right things.  I couldn’t have done it without you.

In other, much lighter news…

I met with my prof this morning about my project.  I am indeed WAY ahead of where my classmates are.  She likes the overall design, just had a few suggestions given that my skill level is above everyone else’s.  And then she fucked it all up because she really doesn’t know near as much as she thinks.

But I did find out that I’m nearly at the half-way mark with my degree.  I have two classes left for the Tech Comm side (summer and then fall) and then next spring I’ll start on the Advanced Writing classes.  WOOT!

things you shouldn’t do – ?

Tags

alcohol, divorce, life, limits, meds, mental health, mental illness, stress, suicide, the world is full of fucking idiots

Evidently I enjoy torturing myself.  Who knew?

So I decided I’d take a peek at the browser history on Josh’s table.

Porn.  Motorcycles.  How to brew beer / make moonshine.  How to drink secretly and not get caught.  (nice)

How much Ambien constitutes a lethal dose?

That was the last thing he looked at last night.

I know he needs help, I’ve known all along.  But every time I’ve tried to arrange for him to get it, he finds a reason to not take it or he purposely sabotages it.  Apparently he hasn’t hit rock bottom yet – that place we all end up eventually and we’re faced with the choice of either staying down and dying or taking the hand that’s being offered and pulling ourselves back up.

Sometimes it’s better to walk away than get pulled down into the hole, too.

life keeps getting in the way of my attemps to live

Tags

alcohol, bipolar disorder, depression, divorce, family, kids, life, limits, meds, mental health, mental illness, moods, school, sick, sleep, stress, suicide, the world is full of fucking idiots, work

I’m really not even sure where to begin.  Looks like the last time I posted was Tuesday.  What’s happened since Tuesday…

Work got busy again.  Kind of feeling like it’s just never enough at that place.  I love what I do and I really enjoy working with most of the faculty, but the management in my department is pretty well just falling apart.  There seems to be no accountability and my “manager” has no business being in charge of people.  And the two people above her are apparently not all that concerned with our group.  Whatever, as long as someone makes sure I get a paycheck.

School Wednesday night was harsh.  This prof really has no fucking business teaching some of this stuff.  Maybe not any of it.  But when she tries to teach us the software portion – Dreamweaver, InDesign, and Photoshop – I actually have a better working knowledge of most of it than she does.  So anyway, we’re working with Dreamweaver (will be the rest of the semester I guess) and she’s trying to explain – AGAIN – how to setup the style sheets and build a basic page.  Um, sorry, but if they didn’t understand the way you presented it last week do you honestly think they’re going to get it this week with the same fucking explanation?

At any rate, we worked straight through the entire time (5:30 – 8:10) with no breaks.  Or I should say, I worked straight through, ignoring her the whole time.  I managed to get all of the pages for my site constructed and the text dumped in.  I still have a little formatting to do.  Our next project is a group collaboration doing essentially the same thing.  Yay.

Thursday was mostly nonexistent for me.  Josh and I got along until sometime in the evening when I asked him to promise not to drink Friday night while Mom and I went to the community playhouse.  That set off a shit storm that lasted all weekend.

So I was up late Friday night because of the musical we saw, which was phenomenal.  I got up early on Saturday to try to get some stuff done.  Had the kid all day.  Took all of us out for dinner at Olive Garden to celebrate her birthday.  Stayed up way too late because she and Josh spread her new Lego kit all over my bed and insisted on watching tv.  Mom had given Josh my dad’s old laptop to use for school and her old desk, both of which we moved down here during the day.  Josh took his Ambien and insisted on playing with the laptop.  And then proceeded to dump and entire glass full of the sweetened carbonated water stuff he was drinking in the keyboard.  He then closed the lid, left it running, and finally came to bed.

Do you feel bad for me yet?

So I didn’t get to go to bed Saturday night until around midnight.  Got up early – time change! – and looked at the laptop.  There was a band of condensation about 2.5″ wide all the way across the screen.  Before he took over Saturday night I had discovered an additional data drive I hadn’t realized was there which contains several years worth of photos of my nieces, photos that I’m not sure ever got backed up on the external drive.  I figured I’d just take care of it in the morning because I was tired.

Now do you feel bad for me?

Pretty much all I heard on Sunday was, “I’m sorry, it was an accident.  Can I kiss you?  That’ll make it better.”  No, just, just get the fuck away from me.

Take a plate and throw it on the ground.  What happens?

It breaks.

Apologize to the plate; tell it you’re sorry.  What happens?

It’s still broken.

And he hasn’t apologized to my mom.  It was her computer, the pictures that may be lost were of her husband and her grandchildren.  But he hasn’t apologized.  And my guess is that he won’t.

So after dinner I try talking to him, try getting him to tell me what’s wrong.  “I’m fine.”  Ok, then I guess I’m fine, too.  See you in the morning.  Wake up around 11 to use the bathroom.  He’s got his entire bottle of Ambien spread out on the bed in front on him; counting them.

HUGE ASS MOTHER FUCKING TRIGGER RIGHT HERE KIDS

I ask him what the fuck he’s doing.  “Counting my pills.  I combined two bottles so I need to know how many I have.”  You only take 2 a night, right?  “yeah”  Then as long as you have 2, you’re good.  Put the fucking pills away.  “what’s the big deal?”  The big deal is that the only real reason to count sleeping pills is to make sure you have enough to kill yourself.

Every time it got too quiet, I woke up and checked to see if he was breathing, just in case.

So this morning he gives me shit about staying in bed.  I tell him I didn’t sleep at all.  “I didn’t either, but I’m hauling my ass in to work.”  That’s real nice for you.  I have this stuff called vacation time and I fully intend to use 8 hours of it today.

I’m just really pretty sure that there will be very little higher cognitive function today.  I’m going to try to get my homework taken care of before my meeting with the prof tomorrow morning.  I’ll do my best to clean up the mess down here.  And then I’ll get to tackle the laptop and see if maybe I can resurrect it.  Josh is “promising” that he’ll be good to me.  I just wish his promises still meant something, but when someone constantly breaks their promises to you, it’s really just more empty words.

the things I’ve lost

Tags

bipolar disorder, blog for mental health 2014, borderline personality disorder, family, friends, life, mental health, mental illness, school, sleep, suicide

On the drive in to work this morning it struck me that I’ve lost quite a bit to this whole “mental illness” business.  But the flip side of that coin is that I’ve also gained a lot.  I figured maybe this was worth writing about.  I mean really, you’re coming to a blog that calls itself “Mental in the Midwest” – writing about my mental illnesses might just make sense.

What I’ve lost:

• Friends, lots of friends.  Most of this is my doing.  At the beginning it was because I’d been treating people like shit for too long before my diagnosis came.  Later it was because I was picking the wrong people to be my friends.  For awhile it was because I would lean on people too much and not give enough back to the relationship.  I don’t have many people even now that I really consider friends that are physically close enough to get together with – a handful at best.  The bulk of my friends are online and 99% of the time that’s how I prefer it.
• The ability to sing.  I used to sing in choirs at school, in the car, to calm myself, to my second husband.  I got to sing Handel’s “Messiah” at the big fancy theatre here when I was a sophomore in college.  Now I can’t carry a tune in a handle with ergonomic handles.  Not sure why.
• The ability to do most things which require fine motor control.  In my day I made some truly beautiful things, like the angel below.  She’s made primarily from size 11-0 seed beads done in brick stitch, which means you add one bead at a time.  Thanks to Lithium, this is no longer something I can even think about doing.
• Along with that, typing has gotten harder – partially because of the motor control and partially because it seems like the connection between my brain and my hands isn’t as solid as it once was.  During the heyday of my undergrad degree I could type 92 words per minute, virtually error free.  Now…  Yeah, I wouldn’t even know, and I have a lot more mistakes.
• The ability to sleep without chemical intervention.  I’ve always had some degree of difficulty getting to sleep at night, but now it’s pretty well a given that it ain’t gonna happen without a fistful of meds.  I miss the days of being able to wear out my body and my mind and then sleep peacefully until the next morning.

However, there is always a flip side.  While I’ve lost things to mental illness, I’ve also gained.

• Online friends.  Through my blog I’ve met some lovely people who are struggling with illnesses of their own.  We are a kind of “virtual family” and I love them all dearly.
• A greater appreciation for my parents.  I always knew they loved me, but they more than proved how much by never EVER giving up on me.  It makes me value the time I had with my dad before he passed and gives me determination to do whatever I can to take care of my mom when she needs me.
• The knowledge that I truly can do anything I set my mind to.  Not too long after being diagnosed I started an online Master’s degree.  Despite attempting suicide and spending a week in the hospital during the middle of one of the classes, I graduated with a 3.8 GPA.
• Understanding.  I know now why I did some of the unbelievable things I did as a younger person and why I sometimes felt like I did.
• Strength.  I actively and purposely tried to kill myself FOUR TIMES and (obviously) didn’t succeed.  I am stronger than either of my illnesses, I am stronger than my faults, I am stronger than anything broken about myself.  It’s cliched, but it’s true – anything that doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.